What?! Your neighbors don’t like you either?

When they start putting a “for sale” sign in your front yard, be worried!

Peace.
Rick Beagle

The point of this article is that if someone can not otherwise afford to buy and own a house on their own w/o tax credits they probably aren’t in good enough financial shape to operate and maintain it too. See my post on 8/9 above.

So then what? Tax credits for insurance? Utilities? Maintenance?

More of may hard earned money taken from me to give to someone else so they can afford something they couldn’t otherwise?

I was NOT saying someone should “listen to” me and not buy a house. Buy a house. Buy a dozen houses. Just be sure as best you can that you can afford to buy, operate and maintain each home. And if you miscalculated, played it too close to the financial bone, and can’t afford the costs of a house it isn’t my responsibility to pay to keep you in your misjudgement. I guarantee no one would pay to keep me and my family in our home if something happened and I couldn’t make the mortgage payments anymore.

I’m using an example where someone LISTENS TO YOU* and doesn’t buy a house, then 40 years later he’s paying more to rent a room (which also renders him unable to afford to retire) than he would have been paying to own the house he would have bought if he hadn’t listened to you.

Planning for later years is PRECISELY why he should buy a house early in life.

* refer to your above BINGO! reply

If you’re saying that he should have bought but didn’t and now has to rent, at the risk of sounding cold, that’s life. A missed opportunity. I have known people who rented all their lives waiting for just the right time to buy and never did. Or had some other reason why renting was better than owning. So they spent a lot of $$$ all their lives and own nothing for it.

I also think a lot has to do with planning for later years. Even (or perhaps especially because) a low income earner can see they are getting up in the years and eventually will be unable to work or work a productively as when younger. Planning for later stages of life is a very hard thing for many people but that’s no excuse. We all will be getting older one day.

What do you say to a lifetime low earner when he spends twice as much in old age (and can’t afford to retire) to rent a room in a house than he would be paying to own a home if he has bought a modest home 30 years earlier?

Do you really believe he shouldn’t have bought the home?

I have a friend in Merrick that’s been trying to sell his house down by the water. He can’t. The property tax is just too high. No one will pay the price he wants plus having to pay the tax. If he cuts the price so low as to sell it just isn’t worth it.

Back to the topic – All these costs (insurance, utlities, repairs etc) are also going up. Not down. And never will. So will the tax credit go up too to off set the increases? Probably.